Karin Knorr Cetina
George Wells Beadle Distinguished Service Professor
Ph.D. University of Vienna, Austria
Habilitation. University of Bielefeld, Germany
Office: Social Sciences 424
Phone: 773-834-3312
Email: knorr@uchicago.edu
Homepage: University of Constance
Homepage: University of Chicago, Anthropology
CV: Curriculum Vita
Karin Knorr Cetina is interested in financial markets, knowledge and information, as well as in globalization, theory and culture. Her current projects include a book on global foreign exchange markets and on post-social knowledge societies. She continues to do research on the information architecture of financial markets, on their "global microstructures" (the global social and cultural form these markets take) and on trader markets in contrast to producer markets. She also studies globalization from a microsociological perspective, using an ethnographic approach, and she continues to be interested in "laboratory studies," the study of science, technology and information at the site of knowledge production - particularly in the life sciences and in particle physics.
Knorr Cetina is interested in dissertations having to do with finance and markets, science, and information, and globalization and post-social theory, that is attempts to theorize the role of (material, epistemic, consumer, artificial) objects in social life. Current dissertation students work, for example, on global debt relief technologies and software systems produced within the framework of international organizations, and on the conception, use and production of social robots in different countries. These students use an ethnographic approach to better understand the theoretical and cultural construction and the various dimensions of the respective domains.
Research Interests
Social Studies of Knowledge, Culture and Social Theory.
Selected Publications
The Sociology of Financial Markets. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004 (edited with A. Preda)
"Capturing Markets? A Review Essay on Harrison White on Producer Markets," Socio-Economic Review, 2004
"From Pipes to Scopes," Journal Disinktion, 2003
"Global Microstructures: The Virtual Societies of Financial Markets," American Journal of Sociology 107(4) (2002): 905-95
Die Fabrikation von Erkenntnis. Zur Anthropologie der Naturwissenschaft, Suhrkamp, 2002
Wissenskulturen. Ein Vergleich naturwissenschaftlicher Wissensformen, Suhrkamp, 2002
"Traders' Engagement with Markets: A Postsocial Relationship," Theory, Culture and Society, 2002
"Transparency Regimes and Management by Content in Global Organizations: The Case of Institutional Currency Trading," Journal of Knowledge Management, 2001
"The Market as an Object of Attachment: Exploring Postsocial Relations in Financial Markets," Canadian Journal of Sociology, 2000
Epistemic Cultures. How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1999
"Sociality with Objects. Social Relations in Postsocial Knowledge Societies," Theory, Culture and Society 14(4) (1997): 1-30
The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science, Oxford, Pergamon Press 1981
Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro- and Macrosociologies, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981 (edited with Aaron Cicourel)
